©ErN
75, entry Mar 2007, updates through
2015
1.
Secret Tunnels! -or-
"Quick, your majesty! Into the
sewer!"
"I'll see you in the tunnel!"
It
sounds like something out of Baroness Orczy's Scarlet Pimpernel: the swish and
rustle of ballroom finery, swordplay and the
shouts of revolutionaries running through the
night, thrusting their flickering torches into
any cubby-hole that might shelter a cowering
nobleman; then, the storming of the royal
palace, at which point the king turns the trick
candelabrum lever in the library to move the
wall panel and flees into the secret passage and
away to a ship that takes him into exile
forever. Whew. Sob. It didn't turn out that way
in Naples, but I wish it had. That's much better
than Garibaldi's army
just kicking down the damned door and marching
in. (Actually, in September of 1860, Garibaldi
took the train (!) for the last seven miles into
the city and was greeted by a cheering throng.)
On February 19, 1853,
King Ferdinand II of Bourbon,
signed a decree that gave to architect Errico Alvino the
task of building an underground passageway from
the west under Mt.
Echia (Pizzofalcone) to connect with
Piazza Vittoria at the royal palace. (Thus, the
tunnel would bore beneath the cliff upon which
stood the acropolis of the original Greek city
of Parthenope,
well before "Neapolis"—Naples.) This was not
meant for pleasurable strolls in the Bat Cave
for the royal family or anything of such a
social nature. The tunnel was strictly military:
it was meant to bring in troops to protect the
Royal Palace, if necessary; these troops were
garrisoned on the other side of Pizzofalcone
near Piazza Vittoria at via Pace (now via
Domenico Morelli) in quarters at Ferrantina
square and at San
Pasquale di Chiaia. The tunnel would also
provide an escape route for the royal family.
(What would happen if the troops running in ran
into the kings and queens running out? I don't
know.)
The work was
started immediately and then interrupted in 1855
for technical reasons as well as the fact the
revolutionary turmoil was moving faster than the
people with shovels. The entire kingdom was
about to be engulfed in a war to resist
Garibaldi and subsequent incorporation into a
united Italy, a war that the Bourbons ultimately
lost.
The
end of the tunnel at via Domenico Morelli
had the advantage of some "starter" caves to
work with. These had actually been quarries used
to provide blocks of tuff rock for the many Spanish villas and
churches that sprang up in the 1500s and 1600s
in the area. Thus, one finds inscribed
dedications from as early as 1512 of a villa
belonging to one Andrea Carafa, count of San
Severino, and, from 1588, the quarry that
provided material for the church of the Nunziatella (converted
into the Bourbon military academy in 1787).
In spite of the
advantages of pre-dug cavities in the area, 1855
builders started running into enormous
difficulties due to the large number of cisterns
and aqueducts still in use at the time below the
surface, things that you could not simply dig
through without interrupting (or even
destroying) the water supply of tens of
thousands of inhabitants in the area. The
tunnelers in the 1850s also ran into the same
problems as have their colleagues throughout the
centuries in Naples (even today!): to wit, the
changing nature of the material you are trying
to tunnel through. It is all volcanic, but when
you cross the boundary from solid tuff into a
less densely packed strata of pyroclastic
material, the sides and ceiling are more likely
to cave in; thus, as the tunnel progress from
west to east, it narrows and gets lower since
the workers had to spend more time shoring up
potential danger spots rather than making the
whole length uniformly wide and high. (This item has more on
recent problems of tunneling in Naples.)
The tunnel was left
in an unfinished state, that is, without
an exit near the royal palace, until 1939, when
the Fascist government decided to convert it
into an air raid
shelter (see item #3, below) The entrance
was on the north side of Piazza Plebiscito
from the building that now houses the Naples
prefecture. After the war, the entrance was
covered and forgotten about until 1968, when
local urban spelunker Clemente Esposito
uncovered it. The numbers are impressive: the
original Bourbon tunnel plus the earlier Spanish
quarries plus the aqueducts converted to air
raid shelters (possible only after the new
Naples aqueduct in the late 1800s had made them
no longer necessary ) come out to 10,000 square
meters (that is, 10 sq. km or six square miles).
Until the 1970s the underground
area was used as a "Municipal Deposit." What
that really meant was a place to dump the
enormous amounts of wartime rubble. This
includes not just the bricks of bombed-out
buildings, but cars, motorcycles, old
refrigerators, statues, and, generally speaking,
accumulated broken bits and pieces of centuries
of Naples. An exhibition about the tunnel was
put on at the Castel dell'Ovo
a number of years ago. One awaits further news
of some final disposition of this latest
addition to what Neapolitans now call "the other
city," by which they mean the 700 (!)
quarries and many miles of ancient
passageways beneath the
surface.
#2 update: Mar 14, 2010
I'm not sure what the
big deal is about discovering chunks of those
Fascist Marble Statues (FMS!—overly-ripped
goons of Art Deco Futurism who more or less all
resemble the robot Gort in The Day the Earth
Stood Still—except
not as limber). Yet, the papers are fussing
about the statues, apparently dumped into the
Bourbon Tunnel as the Allies closed in on Naples
in 1943 and Fascists swiftly morphed into
anti-Fascists. (I guess the mayor couldn't very
well hide those things in his closet.) The
papers should really be fussing about the place
where they were found—the
tunnel—because this means that
work is progressing towards opening the thing to
the public sooner or later, another bit of
underground Naples to add to the already
impressive list of tunnels, caves and quarries
of "the city beneath the city." [Link to portal for
Underground Naples.]
An organization called Borbonica sotterranea is pushing ahead with the clearing and cleaning up of the ex-Bourbon military tunnel beneath Mt. Echia. They have produced a good video of their efforts to date; the video is at this You Tube link. The hard-hatted gentleman's explanations are in Italian, but they more or less tell the same story as item#1, above. There are some interesting sidelights in the video, however, such as the addition of a row of late WWII latrines put in when the tunnel was used as a bomb shelter. Also, you can see the abandoned cars and other detritus dumped into the tunnel in the mid-1940s. The particular FMS that has the papers oohing-and-aahing seems to be what is left (photo, above) of the monument to Aurelio Padovani (1888-1926), an early Neapolitan Fascist trade unionist who participated in Mussolini's march on Rome in 1922. The monument to him had stood in the square in front of the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli (now the site of ongoing construction for a new metro station).
#3 update: Mar 7, 2011
The papers have announced
the opening of the splendid new Morelli parking
structure; it is dug into the side of Mt. Echia,
a few yards from the west exit of the Galleria della
Vittoria car tunnel one block from the
Villa Comunale. The
entrance to the structure is totally
inconspicuous; within, however, it is a
seven-story affair with 250 long-term rental
spaces and 230 hourly slots. More impressive for
our purposes, however, is that the entire affair
occupies the western entrance to the old Bourbon
Tunnel, which has now been opened for public
tours; thus, another bit of the "city beneath
the city" is now accessible to tourists who
fancy themselves mole-people.
There is a difference between being "beneath the city" at this site and elsewhere, say, in the downtown area of Naples. Here, you are really beneath the pre-Naples city of Parthenope that sat on the hill above you. The entire hill, as indicated in item #1, above, has a great many quarried out caves, perhaps the most famous of which is the Cavern of Mithra. That one, of course, is Greek, but most of the large quarried spaces beneath Mt. Echia are cisterns that drew on the Carmignano Aqueduct from the early 1600s. These are upside-down funnel-like structures dug deep down into the hill (details here), many of which were then incorporated into the Bourbon Tunnel in the 1850s. Those cisterns (and the tunnel, itself) were abandoned after the building of the new aqueduct in the 1880s; later, many of the cisterns were used as bomb shelters in WWII. The builders of the shelters used the Bourbon Tunnel for access and then tunneled off to the sides to find additional cisterns, and then tunneled further to the next one and the next, thus connecting them and giving a labyrinthian quality to the whole complex of shelters. Some of them are very large (one is nicknamed "The Cathedral"!), and some are small enough to make you intensely dislike being confined beneath a mountain. (Don't make me talk about the ant-hive corridors and connecting passageways!)
Entrance, newly opened Bourbon Tunnel
Stairways into the shelters
from the surface were dug in WWII, but there are
older stairs as well. A guide told me that
during the process of exploring and clearing the
old cistern spaces to the sides of the tunnel,
they found a long, steep stairway leading up and
decided to follow it. They found a closed door
up at the top and knocked! A dog on the other
side went into a frenzy of überbark since he had
surely never heard a knock from behind that door
before! Sooner or later, Fido's master came and
opened up. (He said "Who is it?" first, at which
point one of the fun-loving guys from Borbonica
sotterranea replied, "We have come from
the Underworld to take you! Heh-heh-heh.")
The urban spelunkers found themselves in the
basement of a veterinary clinic up on a busy
thoroughfare atop the hill in the area known as
Pizzofalcone. The members of Borbonica
sotterranea have spent the last five
years to get as far as they have and the results
are impressive. For my tastes, however, they
spend a bit too much time doting on their
collection of old abandoned cars and motor
scooters; rather than clear them out, the Borbonica
sotterranea has pushed them all over to
the side where they join the broken hunks of
marble mentioned in item #2 (above); it all
looks like a display of humorous installation
art; for example, one old and crushed Fiat has
been adorned with a scrawled reminder from the
attendant to "please leave the keys in the
ignition." (The sign was probably put there by
"Underworld Guy" from a few sentences ago. The
cars are even featured on the tickets for the
guided tours (photo, above). So, the entrance is
on via Morelli; there is a pedestrian entrance
that will lead you past the parking structure to
the back and to the gated entrance to the
tunnel. (If I have not been obvious enough about
it, don't go if you are claustrophobic.)
#2 update: Mar 14, 2010
I'm not sure what the
big deal is about discovering chunks of those
Fascist Marble Statues (FMS!—overly-ripped
goons of Art Deco Futurism who more or less all
resemble the robot Gort in The Day the Earth
Stood Still—except
not as limber). Yet, the papers are fussing
about the statues, apparently dumped into the
Bourbon Tunnel as the Allies closed in on Naples
in 1943 and Fascists swiftly morphed into
anti-Fascists. (I guess the mayor couldn't very
well hide those things in his closet.) The
papers should really be fussing about the place
where they were found—the
tunnel—because this means that
work is progressing towards opening the thing to
the public sooner or later, another bit of
underground Naples to add to the already
impressive list of tunnels, caves and quarries
of "the city beneath the city." [Link to portal for
Underground Naples.]An organization called Borbonica sotterranea is pushing ahead with the clearing and cleaning up of the ex-Bourbon military tunnel beneath Mt. Echia. They have produced a good video of their efforts to date; the video is at this You Tube link. The hard-hatted gentleman's explanations are in Italian, but they more or less tell the same story as item#1, above. There are some interesting sidelights in the video, however, such as the addition of a row of late WWII latrines put in when the tunnel was used as a bomb shelter. Also, you can see the abandoned cars and other detritus dumped into the tunnel in the mid-1940s. The particular FMS that has the papers oohing-and-aahing seems to be what is left (photo, above) of the monument to Aurelio Padovani (1888-1926), an early Neapolitan Fascist trade unionist who participated in Mussolini's march on Rome in 1922. The monument to him had stood in the square in front of the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli (now the site of ongoing construction for a new metro station).
#3 update: Mar 7, 2011
The papers have announced
the opening of the splendid new Morelli parking
structure; it is dug into the side of Mt. Echia,
a few yards from the west exit of the Galleria della
Vittoria car tunnel one block from the
Villa Comunale. The
entrance to the structure is totally
inconspicuous; within, however, it is a
seven-story affair with 250 long-term rental
spaces and 230 hourly slots. More impressive for
our purposes, however, is that the entire affair
occupies the western entrance to the old Bourbon
Tunnel, which has now been opened for public
tours; thus, another bit of the "city beneath
the city" is now accessible to tourists who
fancy themselves mole-people.There is a difference between being "beneath the city" at this site and elsewhere, say, in the downtown area of Naples. Here, you are really beneath the pre-Naples city of Parthenope that sat on the hill above you. The entire hill, as indicated in item #1, above, has a great many quarried out caves, perhaps the most famous of which is the Cavern of Mithra. That one, of course, is Greek, but most of the large quarried spaces beneath Mt. Echia are cisterns that drew on the Carmignano Aqueduct from the early 1600s. These are upside-down funnel-like structures dug deep down into the hill (details here), many of which were then incorporated into the Bourbon Tunnel in the 1850s. Those cisterns (and the tunnel, itself) were abandoned after the building of the new aqueduct in the 1880s; later, many of the cisterns were used as bomb shelters in WWII. The builders of the shelters used the Bourbon Tunnel for access and then tunneled off to the sides to find additional cisterns, and then tunneled further to the next one and the next, thus connecting them and giving a labyrinthian quality to the whole complex of shelters. Some of them are very large (one is nicknamed "The Cathedral"!), and some are small enough to make you intensely dislike being confined beneath a mountain. (Don't make me talk about the ant-hive corridors and connecting passageways!)
Entrance, newly opened Bourbon Tunnel
Stairways into the shelters
from the surface were dug in WWII, but there are
older stairs as well. A guide told me that
during the process of exploring and clearing the
old cistern spaces to the sides of the tunnel,
they found a long, steep stairway leading up and
decided to follow it. They found a closed door
up at the top and knocked! A dog on the other
side went into a frenzy of überbark since he had
surely never heard a knock from behind that door
before! Sooner or later, Fido's master came and
opened up. (He said "Who is it?" first, at which
point one of the fun-loving guys from Borbonica
sotterranea replied, "We have come from
the Underworld to take you! Heh-heh-heh.")
The urban spelunkers found themselves in the
basement of a veterinary clinic up on a busy
thoroughfare atop the hill in the area known as
Pizzofalcone. The members of Borbonica
sotterranea have spent the last five
years to get as far as they have and the results
are impressive. For my tastes, however, they
spend a bit too much time doting on their
collection of old abandoned cars and motor
scooters; rather than clear them out, the Borbonica
sotterranea has pushed them all over to
the side where they join the broken hunks of
marble mentioned in item #2 (above); it all
looks like a display of humorous installation
art; for example, one old and crushed Fiat has
been adorned with a scrawled reminder from the
attendant to "please leave the keys in the
ignition." (The sign was probably put there by
"Underworld Guy" from a few sentences ago. The
cars are even featured on the tickets for the
guided tours (photo, above). So, the entrance is
on via Morelli; there is a pedestrian entrance
that will lead you past the parking structure to
the back and to the gated entrance to the
tunnel. (If I have not been obvious enough about
it, don't go if you are claustrophobic.)|
Lor corso in questa valle
si diroccia; fanno Acheronte, Stige e Flegetonta; poi sen van giù per questa stretta doccia,infin, là ove più non si dismonta... Dante-la Divina Commedia, Canto XIV |
Their course sinks to this pit
from stone to stone, becoming Acheron,
Phlegethon, and Styx.Then by this narrow sluice
they hurtle down to the end of all descent, and
disappear... (trans. J. Ciardi) |
To Hell
& Back
or
or
This is NOT
the River
Styx...this is NOT the
River Styx....
That is your mantra if you
decide to go on this tour. And the little guide in the
hard-hat might not
be Charon taking you for your last boat ride, this one
to Hell. Indeed, since my last visit (item #3, above)
the troglodytes of Borbonica
sotterranea have been hard at work burrowing
out their domain beneath Mt. Echia, the hill upon which
the original Greek city of Parthenope was built before
there was a Naples.
The most recent activity has involved bridging the spaces of the Bourbon Tunnel (described in the entries, above) to an adjacent and more recent space, this one a 400-meter tunnel started in the 1980s and meant to be part of the original Rapid Tram Line (RTL) which was to be ready by 1990 in time for the Naples matches of the World Cup that year (see this link). That flopped, both as soccer and engineering. Italy lost to Argentina in Naples, and the RTL tunnel was partially built but never completed. (The stretch of tunnel running in from near the stadium in Fuorigrotta has, however, since been incorporated into the new Line 6 coming into Naples from the west. That section is now up and running as far in as Mergellina.) From the downtown end of that RTL project, however, they started to tunnel beneath Piazza Plebiscito (the square in front of the Royal Palace). The idea was to head west and meet up with the line coming in. Assuming they didn't pass each other like moles in the night, there would then have been some grand Transcontinental Railway Moment; they would drive a golden spike, perhaps, and fans could then get out to the matches in Fuorigrotta. Could they do all that in just a few years? No. The whole project gave up the ghost, and the partially completed tunnel beneath Piazza Plebiscito was abandoned.
When I said "bridging the spaces," that was only partially a metaphor. It isn't a bridge; it's a small barge—or a large raft. (There is standing room for about a dozen persons.) Lower sections of the Bourbon Tunnel already had water in them—not seawater, by the way; it's fresh water fed by the same subterranean sources that fed the old reservoir system (mentioned in the entries above). There was about a 40-meter-wide pool of water between the chambers of the Bourbon tunnel and the abandoned RTL tunnel, so Borbonica sotterranea built a shaky raft dock on both sides. That is the ride you can now take—not to hell, but rather to one hell of a waste of taxpayers' money.
Make no mistake, though. It can
be spooky. As in Dante, you "hurtle down to the end of
all descent," down through one narrow tunnel after
another. (I got stuck at one point and, I assure you,
the chorus whisper-chanting behind me in ancient Greek,
"C'mon, fat boy, move
it along!" did not help, although it does sound
better in ancient Greek). You wind up at water's edge
and all you see is nothing at the other end. Suddenly
it's gloomy. It might be Hades. Of course, it isn't
(since everyone knows that the real River Styx is at Lake Averno, a few miles north
of Naples.) It's just a very dark place; you step off
onto the raft, and here is where your imagination kicks
in. It's pitch black and for all you know—which
is zero—you may never come back. You
are then poled along to the far side by that mysterious
Charon impersonator. (One of your fellow-travelers has a
sense of humor that impels him to hold his little
flashlight beneath his chin and shine it up such that
his face takes on that grotesque "Hey, mommy. I'm a
monster"-look. I try to edge him closer to the side of
the raft.)
You step off into a very large space well beneath Piazza Municipio. There is no exit at that end and, as far as I know, no plans to build one. The space is huge, an unused quarter-mile of modern subway tunnel with no future. It is not even to be used as part of the incoming #6 subway line, which is digging its own tunnel. Since the heavy lifting (or digging) has already been done, they should use the space for something, maybe an underground Museum of Boondoggles connected by satellite to countless other such sites around the world.
Since there is no clear passage up to the top and out onto the welcoming wide-open spaces of Piazza Plebiscito (although the original construction workers must have had one), you turn around, walk back, hail a raft and trudge back the way you came, all the way beneath Mt. Echia, the hill of ancient Parthenope.
It occurs to me that if this were Finnish mythology, you could do all that on the back of a swan.
Crossing the Styx- Gustave Doré (1861)
That is your mantra if you
decide to go on this tour. And the little guide in the
hard-hat might not
be Charon taking you for your last boat ride, this one
to Hell. Indeed, since my last visit (item #3, above)
the troglodytes of Borbonica
sotterranea have been hard at work burrowing
out their domain beneath Mt. Echia, the hill upon which
the original Greek city of Parthenope was built before
there was a Naples.The most recent activity has involved bridging the spaces of the Bourbon Tunnel (described in the entries, above) to an adjacent and more recent space, this one a 400-meter tunnel started in the 1980s and meant to be part of the original Rapid Tram Line (RTL) which was to be ready by 1990 in time for the Naples matches of the World Cup that year (see this link). That flopped, both as soccer and engineering. Italy lost to Argentina in Naples, and the RTL tunnel was partially built but never completed. (The stretch of tunnel running in from near the stadium in Fuorigrotta has, however, since been incorporated into the new Line 6 coming into Naples from the west. That section is now up and running as far in as Mergellina.) From the downtown end of that RTL project, however, they started to tunnel beneath Piazza Plebiscito (the square in front of the Royal Palace). The idea was to head west and meet up with the line coming in. Assuming they didn't pass each other like moles in the night, there would then have been some grand Transcontinental Railway Moment; they would drive a golden spike, perhaps, and fans could then get out to the matches in Fuorigrotta. Could they do all that in just a few years? No. The whole project gave up the ghost, and the partially completed tunnel beneath Piazza Plebiscito was abandoned.
When I said "bridging the spaces," that was only partially a metaphor. It isn't a bridge; it's a small barge—or a large raft. (There is standing room for about a dozen persons.) Lower sections of the Bourbon Tunnel already had water in them—not seawater, by the way; it's fresh water fed by the same subterranean sources that fed the old reservoir system (mentioned in the entries above). There was about a 40-meter-wide pool of water between the chambers of the Bourbon tunnel and the abandoned RTL tunnel, so Borbonica sotterranea built a shaky raft dock on both sides. That is the ride you can now take—not to hell, but rather to one hell of a waste of taxpayers' money.
The abandoned RTL
tunnel
(photo, F. Salvi, NUG)
(photo, F. Salvi, NUG)
Make no mistake, though. It can
be spooky. As in Dante, you "hurtle down to the end of
all descent," down through one narrow tunnel after
another. (I got stuck at one point and, I assure you,
the chorus whisper-chanting behind me in ancient Greek,
"C'mon, fat boy, move
it along!" did not help, although it does sound
better in ancient Greek). You wind up at water's edge
and all you see is nothing at the other end. Suddenly
it's gloomy. It might be Hades. Of course, it isn't
(since everyone knows that the real River Styx is at Lake Averno, a few miles north
of Naples.) It's just a very dark place; you step off
onto the raft, and here is where your imagination kicks
in. It's pitch black and for all you know—which
is zero—you may never come back. You
are then poled along to the far side by that mysterious
Charon impersonator. (One of your fellow-travelers has a
sense of humor that impels him to hold his little
flashlight beneath his chin and shine it up such that
his face takes on that grotesque "Hey, mommy. I'm a
monster"-look. I try to edge him closer to the side of
the raft.)You step off into a very large space well beneath Piazza Municipio. There is no exit at that end and, as far as I know, no plans to build one. The space is huge, an unused quarter-mile of modern subway tunnel with no future. It is not even to be used as part of the incoming #6 subway line, which is digging its own tunnel. Since the heavy lifting (or digging) has already been done, they should use the space for something, maybe an underground Museum of Boondoggles connected by satellite to countless other such sites around the world.
Since there is no clear passage up to the top and out onto the welcoming wide-open spaces of Piazza Plebiscito (although the original construction workers must have had one), you turn around, walk back, hail a raft and trudge back the way you came, all the way beneath Mt. Echia, the hill of ancient Parthenope.
It occurs to me that if this were Finnish mythology, you could do all that on the back of a swan.
update Nov 2015 Opening of the New Expansion of the Bourbon Tunnel - Press Conference
After years of constant work,
the Bourbon Underground Association will present the
results at a press conference at 11 a.m. on 14 November
2015 on the premises of Palazzo Serra di Cassano on via
Monte di Dio n°14 in Naples. The new sections were
uncovered and made accessible to the public thanks to
president Gianluca Minin, vice-president Enzo De Luzio,
and a great number of volunteers who have pitched in
over the last few years to dig out and clean this part of the
netherworld of Naples. Even in a city where ancient
underground bits and pieces keep popping up (Roman
boats! Greek tombs!) this type of restored
structure is a novelty for the public, perhaps because
it relates to a relatively recent period of local
history (as you may read, above). Indeed, public
curiosity and admiration for the work undertaken to
restore the tunnel (also "Gallery) continue to grow; the
so-called "Galleria Borbonica" goes back to 1853 and the
reign of Ferdinand II of Bourbon. I am indebted to Clemente Esposito and his article "Il Tunnel Borbonico" on the website of Napoli Underground, by whose kind concession the photo of the tunnel in item #1 appears on this page.
I thank (at least I think I do) Fulvio Salvi of Napoli Underground for having shanghai'd me onto the tour described in item #4 and for constantly whispering in my ear: "The walls are not closing in on you...not closing it on you...not..".
I repeat, if you don't like the dark, water, tight spaces or gloom (in whatever order), don't go.
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